\ i^— - ^ - 
 
 •r^ 
 
THE MARVEL OF SPIRITUAL LIFE 
 
 “Surely there is no enchantment against Jacob, neither is there any divination 
 against Israel: according to this time shall it be said of Jacob and of Israel, What hath 
 God wrought ?” — Numbei’S xxiii, 23. 
 
 “ But we will not boast of things without our measure, but according to the measure 
 of the rule which God hath distributed to us.”— 2 Corinthians x, 13. 
 
 —4. 
 
 These two passages from our Holy Book suggest a lesson for the 
 hour and encourage some pardonable exultation over the marvelous 
 growth of our beloved church. As we study the real causes of such 
 a wonder of power as this, they allow a certain confidence in the 
 continuance of the Divine blessing. No time need be spent on the 
 exposition or history of either text. It is enough to say that St. 
 Paul did not fear to state what he believed to be the facts of the 
 mighty power of the religion of Jesus and of its miraculous growth 
 in the individual heart and among the nations. He did not scruple 
 to boast of what God had wrought in his day and of the transform- 
 ing force of this revealed gospel as it was given to him from heaven, 
 with the assurance that it should spread and triumph gloriously in 
 the earth. His only caution is that this boasting shall be according 
 to the rule which God himself has laid down. This is indeed no 
 narrow limit, for it is always according to the ‘‘effectual working 
 of the mighty power of the living God,” and u beyond all that we 
 ask or think.” 
 
 The other verse quoted contains the words of unwilling eulogy 
 wrung from a scheming enemy, and it, in fact, exactly states the cur- 
 rent opinion of the world concerning our blessed Christianity. Time 
 has proved that human opposition is harmless against all forms of 
 it, because every agency which seeks its overthrow, or even its lim- 
 itation, is at last reluctantly compelled to confess that God has 
 wrought its increase and made sure its final victory. Any church 
 organization whose members have faith in God and hold that faith 
 in love which works for the good of men, may rely on omnipotent 
 power to keep it alive and make it grow ; and it may also boast ac- 
 cording to the measure of blessing which he hath distributed to it. 
 
84 THE MARVEL OF SPIRITUAL LIFE. 
 
 We need not, therefore, hesitate, if the spirit move ns, to utter a 
 few Alleluiahs to-day as we commemorate the hundred years of our 
 unity, under the rule of one discipline, administered by one board 
 of itinerant bishops. And no man should reproach us if we speak 
 with a modest confidence of our- expectations for the future. A cen- 
 tury has demonstrated that God owns our methods with a measure 
 of success which has been reached by no other body of Christian 
 workers. Our standards of doctrine have suffered nothing from 
 changes, and our system of operations is now almost the same as at 
 the very beginning. None of these are by any means as singular as 
 they formerly seemed, for nearly all denominations have adopted 
 many of them with slight modifications, and we may safely say all 
 admire them. Let us then be duly joyfu‘1 and give to the Master 
 the praise of all we claim to have done ; but let us not withhold a 
 fair statement of the good works we have alrQafay accomplished and 
 under God hope hereafter to do. 
 
 Methodism, as a form of Protestant religion, or as a movement to 
 promote the interests of Christianity, or as an effort to “spread 
 scriptural holiness” over the world, is not yet a hundred and sixty 
 years from its cradle, where the Wesleys rocked it in Christ College, 
 Oxford. Men and women now living and in active business can 
 look back and recall the whole half of its life and work. The eyes 
 of every one seventy-eight years old have seen the best half of its 
 progress from its germ, the Holy Club, in 1729. Our sainted Simp- 
 son, so lately translated, was born almost exactly in the middle era 
 of its progress, counting from the real conversion of John Wesley 
 anfl the formation of classes in 1739 and running down to our times, 
 and his glorious life of power and eloquence has covered the period 
 of its greatest growth. In the year of the Bishop’s birth the Illinois 
 District appears to have been formed, though circuit riders had for 
 several years traveled the territory occupied by our conference. The 
 whole church in 1811 had less than 200,000 members. It had 
 been a body with a head and a policy less than thirty years, and as 
 a movement in America to convert men it was then not fifty years 
 old. Barbary Heck, Philip Embury, Robert Strawbridge and Cap- 
 tain Webb had begun their work in 1766, and their successors had 
 followed the settlers wherever they had set up their cibins. In 1784 
 the Methodist ministers, assembled in Baltimore, accepted or elected 
 two Bishops and recognized themselves men truly and properly or- 
 dained as Christian apostles, divinely chosen. by God’s spirit and 
 duly empowered to preach, to baptize, to administer sacraments and 
 to gather men into a church organization. For eighteen years they 
 had been converting the people and forming classes or societies, and 
 
THE MARVEL OF SPIRITUAL LIFE. 85 
 
 they had inducted into these eighteen thousand souls. Their own 
 number was one hundred and four. They had scattered themselves 
 from New York to Georgia in fifty-two circuits or appointments, no 
 one of which touched the Alleghanies. Not a man of all these one 
 hundred and four was to set foot in New England that year or to 
 tread the wilderness which hid the noblest valley of the world. 
 
 To-day the number both of members and preachers has been multi- 
 plied by a hundred who remain in our own communion, and by at 
 least two hundred, if we count all the Methodistic bodies in the land, 
 and probably by five hundred, if we number their converts who 
 have entered and regenerated our sister churches. That is a growth 
 beyond anything in ecclesiastical history, not even excepting the 
 apostolic church of the first centuries. And if we reckon — as jus- 
 tice demands that we ought to do — our hearers, who, in not a few 
 cases are as much christianized as some of our actual members, we 
 shall bring the numbers of our church’s converts and adherents up 
 to about twelve millions. Our church has this year in its temples of 
 worship more than twelve and a half millions of sittings and is 
 adding to them at the rate of two thousand a month. This indicates 
 that we hold ourselves responsible already for the spiritual instruc- 
 tion and moral discipline of at least one-fourth of the population of 
 the nation. The various bodies who hold our forms of belief and 
 usage, by their differing names and races, black and white, native 
 and foreign, do give in this country ithe relgious training, more or 
 less, of one in four of all our people. It is a burdensome, duty and 
 a marvel of religious growth. The increase exceeds that of the pop- 
 ulation in a large degree. In 1790, six years after our church or- 
 ganization, the nation counted almost 4,000,000, and we 57,631, with 
 227 preachers, having in those six years multiplied the membership 
 by three and the ministry by two. The nation has since multiplied 
 itself by fourteen ; our special branch of Methodism has increased 
 over thirty-fold, and all its several offshoots have grown to a hun- 
 dred-fold. Our progress in other particulars, as, for instance, in the 
 main elements of the desirable characteristics of a church, vital 
 piety, or genuine religious life in the soul and purity of morals, 
 general benevolence and philanthropy* charity in heart and speech 
 and kindly intercourse with neighbors, cannot be so readily calcu- 
 lated in figures. We can only estimate the relative amount of these 
 by some general considerations. 
 
 That we are more’ truly intelligent may be inferred, in part at 
 least, from the number and patronage of our colleges and from the 
 emphatic manner iii which our people stand by the public schools. 
 That we have grown in wealth and in social influence and refine- 
 
; ^ ?*p — i 
 
 86 THE MARVEL OF SPIRITUAL LIFE 
 
 ment Deeds no proof. From being a sect everywhere distrusted and 
 ridiculed, aud often derided for illiteracy, we are to,-day honored as 
 the equal of any and counted as the most powerful. That we have 
 become more systematic and liberal in benevolences need not be 
 said so long as our philanthropic and educational, our charitable 
 and missionary enterprises collect and disburse annually not less 
 than $1,500,000, and all are managed in a most admirably efficient 
 way. 
 
 Sum up our denominational progress since 1766, or from the day 
 when, in 1769, the twenty-sixth British Wesleyan Conference raised 
 fifty-two pounds to send Joseph Pillmore and Richard Boardman 
 to America, or from the Christmas when Thomas Coke and Francis 
 Asbury were accepted and elected Bishops, and the history is a mar- 
 vel in whatever light it is seen. Look at the one germ planted in 
 Episcopal New York by Barbara Heck and Philip Embury, another 
 dropped by Captain James Webb in Quaker Philadelphia, and the 
 other sown by Robert Strawbridge in Catholic Maryland, and see 
 to what the harvest has grown ! The fruit shakes like Lebanon. 
 The mountain of the Lord’s house is already exalted above the hill- 
 tops and all the nations read by the light its summit bears. These 
 sparks of grace kindled in the hearts of the lowly have carried their 
 fires around the globe, aud their beacons blaze in every land and in 
 almost every province and city of earth. Every year our Bishops 
 circle the world in their travels and lay our obligations to preach on 
 hearts of every race of meii. Every living language of power, sav- 
 ing the barbarous Russian, tells our version of scriptural holiness. 
 The strong German, the rugged Norse, the polished French, the 
 stately Spanish, the old philosophical Sanskrit, the modern Hindu, 
 the conservative Chinese and the progressive tongue of Japan, all 
 vie with the cosmopolitan English of commerce to preach our doc- 
 trine of life and power. We are now knocking at the gates of iso- 
 lated Corea and driving our wedges of joy into the rift between 
 Turkey and Russia, where Roumania and Wallachia are demanding 
 political independence. The “effectual doors” are open to us wide 
 as the chambers of the east to the beams of the morning sun, and no 
 shades of western night are shut against cur songs and our prayers, 
 our hallelujahs and amens, which keep pace with the dawn and 
 travel with the day round the globe. Like the carols of waking 
 birds, our hymns accompany the morning stars in their early 
 marches, intermitting their melodies no more than those stars veil 
 their fires in the sky. Every tongue of babbling earth can speak 
 and every ear can hear our free, social, jubilant gospel of full salva- 
 tion, and the world exults in it. What has caused all this? 
 
THE MARVEL OF SPIRITUAL LIFE. 87 
 
 First and more than all else, indeed the all, the essence of the 
 whole/ has been our soul-life, the Holy Ghost creating in our in- 
 dividual members a spiritual or divine life. The first Methodists 
 were alive ; had Christ’s life in them ; were set on fire from above, 
 and cherishing that holy flame in themselves, they set other hearts 
 on fire. The secret of all their stability, when less than a dozen were 
 left alone amidst the temptations of the great cities and their wick- 
 edness, was this strange marvel — spiritual life. 
 
 It has been the wonder of the ages that truth and virtue, justice 
 and honor survive the discouragements of vice and sin in this world 
 at any time, and that love and .reverence for law, and faith and obe- 
 dience'to an unseen power as God, should abide amidst indifference 
 and ridicule, opposition and active persecution, is an astounding 
 problem. But that this divine life in the human heart should thrive 
 at all in this sin-governed earth and at length be able to propagate 
 itself into other hearts, is greater than a miracle. It has been re- 
 served for our day and for our church to give the most striking ex- 
 ample of this wonder-working power, one so overwhelming that it 
 might almost astonish a sanhedrim of the angels. Nothing but the 
 promise of the Master, “I will be in you,” “I am your life,” could 
 have given our people this power. The few members to whom Em- 
 bury and Strawbridge preached, and who gathered and prayed and 
 talked of their religious experiences, with the divine life in their 
 souls, did not simply believe in the necessity or the possibility, or 
 the power or glory of regeneration, or of the life of Christ divinely 
 given to the soul. They had felt this life and knew it each for him- 
 self, not by any hear-say or inference. The visitation and incoming 
 of the divine spirit had been to them as real and perceptible in their 
 hearts as was the finger of the angel which touched the sinew of Ja- 
 cob’s thigh and left it out of joint. Every soul of them, preacher 
 and people, realized what a new life was, and they were not afraid 
 nor ashamed to tell it. To them conversion meant something more 
 than a change of purpose, no matter how deliberate*or decided ; or 
 an election to life eternal, no matter how certain or how ennobling; 
 or than a possibility of attaining an assurance of acceptance with 
 the Spirit of the Highest. It meant God and Christ in the nature 
 and the fullness of joy in consequence. By this life they lived, 
 and by its power they also spread their doctrines and their usages. 
 
 The maxim that “all life groVs onlv from life,” is as true in relig- 
 ion as in nature. Nowhere is there a case of spontaneous genera- 
 tion proved. Life alone begets life in vegetable or animal. The 
 Divine Spirit begets the spiritual life in the soul of man, and this 
 attracts and continues life. Children of God by the new birth aie 
 
88 
 
 THE MARVEL OF SPIRITUAL LIFE. 
 
 thus brought together ancl a church is formed. By these human 
 spiritual lives others are warmed into desire and 'the spirit again 
 breathes life. It is as in the beginning, when the Elohim breathed 
 the breath of life into Adam and he became a living soul. Then, as 
 now, in order to create a master and lord of the world something 
 more was necessary than clay fashioned by divine skill and power. 
 A living God must inspire or breathe into the curiously wrought 
 mechanism his own spiritual force and fire, his own energy and life. 
 So our church from its first origin believed and practiced, never 
 hesitating to declare this fruitful truth and never allowing it to be 
 forgotten or ignored that man is nothing unless born of God and 
 holding fast to the life of Christ in the soul. This practical belief 
 carried into daily duty gave the religious world a new impulse. It 
 fired a host of men to brave every privation in order to preach this 
 great practical, vital truth, and it moved men and women to pro- 
 claim it till the land was vocal with the sound of full salvation 
 through Christ. 
 
 The power of life is a marvel everywhere and in every form in 
 which it can appear. Seek to know the difference between a bit of 
 marble and an acorn. Analyze them in a chemist’s laboratory and 
 you find them not so very diverse in their elements — calcium and 
 oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen. Put them into an acid. 
 The marble effervesces, foams and finally dissolves. The acorn 
 scarcely shows a sign of change. But cover them in spring time 
 with moist earth and supply them with a proper degree of warmth ; 
 the acorn soon sends up a plume of verdant life that lays its hands 
 on materials wrested from air, water, earth and sunlight, and rises 
 in a beauty as fresh as the dew, making for itself a garment of glory 
 and a body of power which adorn the landscape with living nobil- 
 ity, and after a century of wrestling with winds and frosts, it has 
 built a tree which gives the mechanic the keel or ribs of a ship to 
 carry the merchant’s commercial treasures around the world. The 
 marble has crumbled and mingled with the common dust of the 
 wayside. In what is the difference? In the life alone. 
 
 Take that same acorn and an egg. Give both the proper condi- 
 tions of heat and position and mark. The acorn sends up its plume 
 of verdure as before and remains fixed to its place in the soil ; but 
 from the egg there comes more than a thing of beauty — a life which 
 puts on wings and traverses the air of all climes, a delight and an 
 inspiration. What is the difference ? Life again ; but how diverse ! 
 Now contrast that bird with a man. See how knowledge and rea- 
 son in him carry him, not through the air, but still above the flight 
 of the bird as far as the clouds sail above the y hills. It is life still, 
 
THE MARVEL OF SPIRITUAL LIFE 89 
 
 but intellectual life now ; a life which knows, and therefore aspires. 
 This life has another power of higher adjustments, so that it can 
 adapt itself to changing conditions and make apparently adverse 
 circumstances contribute to its real advantage. It can use the lime 
 and earth or rocks to build a shelter for itself, or to help separate 
 iron from its oxides, and can, by heat and artful working, make this 
 into steel and thence into tools which shall increase his power a 
 thousand-fold. Dead matter is made the servant of man, and vege- 
 table and animal life seem to compete with each other gladly to add 
 to his power and intelligence and increase the ability of human 
 reason and force to do all things. Indeed, man’s life seems to find 
 no limit to its conquests save the strength of the materials or the 
 time it can command. This life of intelligence and reason has filled 
 the world with marvels of gardens and orchards, of fruitful fields 
 and groaning harvests ; of cities and architecture, of sculpture, 
 painting, music, oratory and poetry. It has erected civil govern- 
 ments, how admirable, and covered the globe with agencies to 
 secure comforts to every man, woman and child of the race. See 
 how it provides blessings in homes and opportunities of improve- 
 ment and refinement by joining all lands and subduing all seas with 
 railways and steamships and telegraphs. It leads toward an un- 
 imagined paradise of progress and perfection ; but it may be accom- 
 panied, as in Greece and Egypt of old, or in Judea and Turkey of 
 to-day, by a hate of purity and a disregard of truth and right ap- 
 palling to humanity. 
 
 There is, however, still another life — that imparted by the Divine 
 Spirit — which is as much higher than this noble intellectual life as 
 the sky is above Chimborazo, or as a man is higher in rank than an 
 oak. And it has been the special mission of Methodism to proclaim 
 the necessity of this life, to exemplify its beauty and its power, and 
 to compel the people to recognize its excellence. How shall this life 
 be described? How can one who has not been born into it and 
 therefore has not felt the thrill of joy and power which it brings, 
 know what it is and what it signifies ? Can a bird or a beast com- 
 prehend the delight of the poet as he beholds a sunrise adorned with 
 the thousand glories of earth and sky, and takes in the grandeur of 
 morning as it opens on the sight through the gates of the east? The 
 animal may dance and sing and exult with pleasure, but what 
 can it know of anything that does more than stir the physical frame ? 
 A clod might as well be expected to feel the throbs of life which 
 run through the wings of the eagle as «he beats the air above the 
 mountain in the morning and seeks food for her young over half a 
 continent, as that an earthly mind should know the fullness of com- 
 
80 THE MARVEL OF SPIRITUAL LIFE. 
 
 : 1 , , •' • ■ 
 
 fort and peace and joy, and life and love that oyerpowers and re- 
 creates the soul of a man when the divine life enters the human and 
 seals it the child of God. Earthly distinctions, imperial relation- 
 ships, scientific attainments and honors, all fade before such a 
 Fatherhood owning as his son the man who has given his heart to 
 truth and to Christ. 
 
 When Methodism first began its mission in the land the knowl- 
 edge of' this blessed life had by no means been lost to the world. 
 But ever since there had been promulgated that grand epic of fatal- 
 ism expounded by Calvin — that logical fiction of predestination, 
 the deepest and noblest of mere human speculations, except panthe- 
 ism, which is more magnificent and more reasonable — and it had 
 dominated the religious thought of the world, Christians had been 
 forgetting the real conscious presence of the life of God in the soul. 
 Not that they denied the new birth or regeneration. By no means. 
 They had in a way emphasized it ; but at the same time they had 
 assumed the impossibility of knowing when it was implanted, or 
 that it was in the soul at all. The old Puritans knew that they were 
 the elect and were therefore possessors of all things. But their de- 
 scendants insisted that it was simph presumption to claim to know, 
 before death, an assured heirship. Life immortal, life divine, could 
 be known only by dying; and this dogma and this practice made 
 genuine, joyous religion a myth in the world and a gloom in social 
 atfairs and human conduct. 
 
 Methodism came with the boldest, most aggressive denial of such 
 a statement and affirmed that Jesus died to give life, and that he 
 gave it not only freely, but as a fire from heaven ; that he not only 
 regenerates the soul into newness of life, but gives the knowledge 
 of that life and that regeneration with joy and power. It asserted 
 a spiritual life, imparted by the Holy Ghost and consciously known, 
 joyousty, rapturously felt, as unmistakably, but more exultingly than 
 the thrill of health returning after sickness, and it demanded that* 
 every one of its adherents should experimentally know that he had 
 this life. It must be by no inference, or hope or persuasion. It 
 must be a heaven-assured certainty as firmly seated in the soul as 
 sensation is in the physical nature. Paul could say, “ I know that I 
 live, because Christ liveth in me,” and every early Methodist must 
 say the same and know it like a fire shut up in the bones. 
 
 Descartes once astonished the world, and even philosophy herself, 
 by his simple affirmation, “ I think therefore I am.” It was to be at 
 once a demonstration of existence, of mind and finally of God. The 
 original Methodists did better than that. They said : “I love, there- 
 fore I live ;” and because they lived, having been dead, they knew 
 
THE MARVEL OB' SPIRITUAL LIFE. 91 
 
 that Jesus Christ lived. For how could dead souls live unless they 
 had teen raised to life by divine power? Life can only grow from 
 life. We do live. Therefore there is a fountain of life. So they lived 
 and sang : 
 
 “ Fountain of Life to all below, 
 
 Let thy salvation roll ; 
 
 Water, replenish ando’erflow 
 Every believing soul. 
 
 The well of Life to us thou art, • 
 
 Of joy, the swelling flood, 
 
 Wafted by Thee, with willing heart, 
 
 We swift return to God.” 
 
 This life of the Holy Ghost in the soul, or more truly, this new 
 creating of the human nature with Christ as an essential part or ele- 
 ment of it, was the one prime idea or practical declaration of Meth- 
 odism, its contribution to Christian theology and individual expe- 
 rience. 
 
 You may talk of the secret of Methodism. It has no secret. Life 
 is its power. Can you hide a live child born into a happy, expec- 
 tant family ? There is no secret in such a case. You cannot sup- 
 press the noise it will make nor the joy it will create. It is a new 
 life in the household and it proclaims itself and is a promise of still 
 fuller joy, and everybody rejoices to hear its proclamation of its 
 new life. You may speculate about the philosophy of Methodism, as 
 Isaac Taylor did and as ambitious critics sometimes do. It has no 
 philoshphy in the sense of scientific explanation other than the sim- 
 ple “I have begotten you,” of the Lord of Life, and, “Because I live 
 you shall live also.” Life, life, spiritual life ! eternal life ! God’s 
 divine life in the nature ! This is all the secret ; this is all the philos- 
 ophy there is or can be. It is the life of God and Christ and the 
 Holy Ghost in the man, making him a new creature such as Paul 
 wrote and spoke of, such as the church of all ages has demanded. 
 
 Methodism was therefore no protest against ecclesiastical intoler- 
 ance. It was life in place of ceremony ; regeneration as against for- 
 malism ; supernal power in the heart as against the death of mere 
 legal duty. And it proclaimed its message in all ears and by every 
 instrumentality, insisting that never one of its living sons or daugh- 
 ters shall dare to keep silence. It would as soon expect a bob-p- 
 link to be mute when June sunshine and fragrance are filling the 
 meadows which give food and shelter to his mate and nestlings, as 
 to allow a soul of man, woman or child, filled for the first time with 
 this divine life, to hold his peace. Is he not raised from the dead ? 
 and how can his spiritual, social, glorious life be silent? 
 
92 THE MARVEL OF SPIRITUAL LIFE. 
 
 “Jesus all the day long 
 
 Is his joy and his song, * 
 
 So that all this salvation might see, 
 
 He hath loved me, each cried, 
 
 He hath suffered and died 
 And brought life to a rebel like me. 
 
 Oh, the rapturous height 
 Of that holy delight 
 
 Which they felt in the life-giving blood; 
 
 Of their Savior possessed, 
 
 They were perfectlv blessed, 
 
 And were filled with ihe fullness of God.” 
 
 “The fullness of God!” O, the sublime audacity of Christian faith 
 and love ! “All the fullness of God!” To claim such a stretch of 
 privilege as this infinity ! It is Paul’s own word, spoken, too, by 
 divine command. Our church has never been afraid of its daring 
 nor of its mysticism either. Our fathers insisted on its use and 
 shouted it aloud, because the life of God — all the life of God — was 
 in them, and was felt as the trees feel the spring time, or as the birds 
 feel the coming of summer. You may just as well fear that roses 
 will refuse to bourgeon forth under the skies of May, or robins for- 
 get to build nests in April, or grapes hesitate to ripen in the sweet 
 air of August, as that converted souls shall mope and pine and de- 
 spair and never tell their joys when Christ lives in them. These 
 old-time Methodists had a new, a divine, a spiritual life, and they 
 knew it, and they did not fail to let the world know it ; and the 
 country very soon acknowledged that all men needed it and hun- 
 gered for it. So it spread like a prairie fire in a windy September, 
 and still it wins its widening way. The Lord renew this fire and 
 revive this life, and help us to send it forward till it shall burn round 
 the world and consume all sin! 
 
 This life is the one element of all our success. It is more than all 
 our achievements as a church, or than all our hundred years of his- 
 tory, exalted in grandeur as that is, for it alone has made the heroic 
 deeds of our ministers and members a possibility and their record a 
 page of such brilliant glory. It has gathered and held together the 
 two millions of our present membership and helped them to convert 
 the three millions more who have entered other churches to fill them 
 with this new life of God in the soul, and every Sabbath day it 
 draws to our chapels ten millions to listen to the story of this super- 
 natural life-power. May not one of our preachers be ashamed to 
 tell it, nor one of our members be afraid to proclaim it! It alone 
 has made us a church which girdles the glpbe with its altars of 
 prayer and which daily makes every circling hour vocal with ex- 
 
 ✓ 
 
THE MARVEL OF SPIRITUAL LIFE. 93 
 
 nltant songs of divine life. The Master help us never to lose one note 
 of that song nor abate an iota of its emphasis or joy. Indeed this 
 exultant power in the soul of man is the hidden life of God in 
 the nature, and its vocal expressions and heart-felt devotion make 
 our earth as it flies through the heaven, a symbolic censer of prayer- 
 ful incense, daily swung in the temple of the universe as an offering 
 of praise to the Triune God and Saviour of men. But the life, the 
 life itself is more than all ; it is the marvel of the ages, the promise 
 and security of all to come. Without it any church is dead and any 
 generation hopeless. We must keep it throbbing in our souls or we 
 perish, and unless we proclaim it, our mission is ended. At our 
 General Conference, now truly ecumenical, or world embracing, 
 we may gather the men of all the races, and hear them speak “all the 
 tongues Babel was cleft into,” as Milton has it, but what would the 
 tongues of men or of angels avail or profit, if this life of God, this 
 love which is life were wanting? We may heap our altars with 
 sacrifices of money, men, talent, good works, high as our church 
 steeples, calling on every preacher in every conference to know if 
 he last turn has been given to the well-adjusted society screws, de- 
 signed to press out oil to lubricate some part of our complicated 
 machinery, so cunningly constructed to relieve individuals of per- 
 sonal responsiblity for the humane charities of conduct. What is it 
 all worth ? Much every way, as St. Paul says in another sense. But so 
 far as genuine life is concerned, absolutely nothing. The whole church 
 machinery for reading, singing, praying, preaching, may 3 r et be run 
 by some steam engine which warms the room, and unless we keep 
 this holy divine life in our hearts, such an engine would be as good as 
 preachers and choir and congregation too. Without spiritual life 
 behind all our exercises the steam engine will be the better agency, 
 for it will exactly obey Gods’ physical law and has never been put 
 under obligations to obey a higher one of duty. Give us the old life 
 and power or we are nothing. The grandest successes of eloquence or 
 learning, the noblest offerings of talents or services, if spiritual power 
 be not the moving impulse, will only reveal our poverty and wretch- 
 edness. We shall then be merely beggars in rags and sickness, and 
 all our public performances will but make our death and uselessness 
 the more disgusting. We may build a score of churches every seven 
 days and fill them with crowds of kneeling worshippers who shall be 
 entranced by the logic, the science and eloquence of silver-tongued 
 preachers, or bewitched by the heaven sweeping music of voice or 
 organ. We may gather millions of children in our Sunday Schools 
 and teach them to keep intelluctual step with the whole world in re- 
 citing international scriptural lessons, arranged by that most wond- 
 
94 THE MAb'VEL OF SPIRITUAL LIFE. 
 
 erful organizer, Dr. Vincent, the peer of any general or statesman 
 of the nations, and what will it all he worth if the spiritual life of 
 heart and soul he not maintained in all its pristine power? Or more 
 properly if it shall not be increased? If the church in multiplying 
 her numbers, in giving birth to her children, shall herself die, and 
 in the agony of her disappointment shall be constrained to name 
 those children Ichabods, what millions, though multipled by mill- 
 ions, will console us for the loss of this ark of our covenant, this life 
 of the Mighty God In the soul. Thanks to the Father of all life we 
 have not yet lost this good power of Christian life ! 
 
 Let us now proceed to consider that this life in the souls of our 
 members has had a most potent influence on our doctrines and also 
 on our usages, or institutions, on our whole economy ; indeed it has 
 really shaped them all, the creeds we hold, our modes of worship, 
 our system of organization into classes, churches, circuits, districts, 
 in fact our whole history. It will always be the case that life 
 will regulate all, will fashion a body to suit its wants and will con- 
 trol the functions of that body. Even the latest statement of the 
 evolution doctrine declares that “life precedes organization” and that 
 “consciousness must go before a plan or purpose of improvement.” 
 But let it first be said that none of our doctrines are what may be 
 properly called new or peculiar. They were preached by Peter, 
 defended by Paul and James, and recommended and illustrated by 
 John, the elder Gaius and the elect lady. Chrysostom and Augus- 
 tine and Luther and Calvin substantially expounded them. Only 
 our emphatic insistenc on the fact of the spiritual life, already spoken 
 of, made them appear singular. They are the same old gospel of 
 salvation and life through Cnrist. Modern science affirms that force 
 may show itself in a thousand ways and still be the same power. 
 And religious life may reveal itself in many forms and be the same 
 life of God in the soul though called by different names and having 
 different modifications. 
 
 1. Our doctrine of sin has been very pronounced, and while we 
 always insisted on the fact of a hereditary depravity in itself so 
 great as to be hopeless for the individual man, we have strenuously 
 insisted that only a conscious disobedience could cut the soul off from 
 the free mercy of Jehovah. Man is rendered incapable by reason of 
 his inherited depravity of saving himself or of doing meritorious 
 works ; but still, till sin separate him from God by a conscious and 
 self-determined act of disobedience, he remains within the reach of 
 a bought salvation. The essence of sin therefore is a willful separ- 
 tion of the soul from the King of mankind and the Ruler of the 
 thoughts. This definiton makes the apostacy o4“ a believer possible 
 
THE MARVEL OF SPIRITUAL LIFE. -95 
 
 and gives room for our doctrine of back slidings and restorations, 
 which has been so often carricatured and often misunderstood. Sin 
 is the most fatal of human activities, as it sets up a frail and fallible 
 judgment and power against an Omnipotent and All-Wise Intelli- 
 gence, and seeks to rule not simply itself but all other things for its 
 advantage. Our fathers held that every act of the mind or of the 
 heart which sought an end out of God or contrary to his law was a 
 sin, and that every such act severed the vital connections between 
 God and the soul. Hence this life could be renewed only by the new 
 contact of the soul and God. Sin to them was therefore the most 
 terrible fate a man could fall into, not simply so much because of the 
 punishment to be inflicted, as because of the death of a soul which it 
 implied. As the branch cut off from the tree is dead, so the man cut 
 off by his sin from Christ was dead, and death meant to them all that 
 is hopeless, decaying, putrifying. 
 
 2. Another doctrine dear to us all and always stated by our min- 
 isters with joy and power is that of “free grace.” So infinite is the 
 sum of benefits derived from Christ and God that we may practically 
 declare that all comes from Him ; and so little can we do, so little 
 have we and all men done in the line of helpful morality, that we 
 may call it all nothing. Hence we say that we can do nothing to 
 assist in bringing the new life of Jesus to the soul, or in keeping it 
 alive in the heart. To simply open the mind and cherish a living 
 desire for God, to long for his presence and turn from all temptation 
 to set up our own will ; to have a faith in God’s goodness and power 
 and to put the whole cause into the hands of Jesus, is all we can do # 
 And then when the Saviour is offered, the soul is to receive him and 
 remember that the believer is “born not of blood, nor of the flesh, 
 nor of the will of man, but of God.” This grace, free as the air, is 
 as universal as gravitation, and will lift every heart to holiness and 
 righteousness, to Christ and his life, unless consciously rejected. 
 We call it therefore free grace and proclaim it as the purchased 
 heritage of the race, and we say it can only be forfeited by actual sin 
 separating the soul from its Savior. 
 
 3. A third point of doctrine so fully emphasized by our pioneers 
 is that of an atonement or sacrifice b.y suffering. It is an observed 
 fact that even our common blessings, our daily advantages come to 
 us from the toils and privations of others. They make sacrifices 
 consciously and with design to provide opportunities for improve- 
 ment and gain to others. Especially is this the case where human 
 affection prevails. Here deliberate choice selects means and pro- 
 vides by its own pain for the joy of the beloved one. Very largely 
 too is this the case even when there is no real choice of sacrifice or 
 
96 
 
 THE MARVEL OF SPIRITUAL LIFE. 
 
 suffering. Human life begins with the agony of another almost 
 equivalent death. And the nurture and care and deprivation re- 
 quired of parents to support and educate a child to maturity, how 
 great. Then note the revealed fact, coincident with this, that the life 
 of toil and suffering, and the death of shame and despair of our Lord 
 and Savior, have in some way purchased pardon and sanctification. 
 Connect this with our doctrine of a divine life in the soul, or rather, 
 base that doctrine on this sacrifice of Christ as its foundation, and 
 we have the substance and glory of our Methodist theology, the sacri- 
 fical atonement by Jesus, the vicarious mediator and author of all 
 salvation. Our preaching has always been vitalized by this. The 
 Cross has stood in the foreground of every picture of hope we have 
 drawn to set before the eyes of the perishing. It has hung as a sign 
 in every heaven we have pointed men to, as a symbol of faith and 
 conquest. Nothing but the Cross has been held up to the dying sin- 
 ner’s mind on which he could fasten and from which he could find a 
 hope. We have never made it an idol as the Roman Church seems 
 many times to do. We have never allowed ourselves to call the 
 sufferings of the Savior penal, and hardly substitutional in any pop- 
 ular sense, but that they were vicarious, and that they do bring help 
 and redemption in some marvelous *and mighty manner, we have 
 always believed and gloried in. These pains and sacrifices of a sin- 
 less Infinite One, who became our brother in the flesh, who still lives 
 to impart to us, in a mysterious way, his own divine life and to be- 
 get us anew, are our standard themes in all our pulpits, and their 
 power does bring us to God and enable us to endure and grow into 
 all that “fullness of God” which has been our inspiration. 
 
 4. Our doctrine presses another point already mentioned. It is 
 one of our vital dogmas and is to be defended at the peril of all else. 
 Our ideas of conversion or regeneration, or the life of God im- 
 planted by the Holy Ghost in the soul, have always been our clear- 
 est, most emphatic, most frequent utterances. We have kept these 
 statements ringing on the air in all our preaching and discussions, 
 at our camp-meetings, at our conferences, in our Sabbath services, 
 and in our weekly prayer and class meetings and love feasts. Clearly 
 known conversion has been coupled with the glorious doctrine and 
 the living practice of a perfect’character of love and faith such as 
 makes the human soul a “perfect man in Christ Jesus. We have in- 
 sisted that this shall be known as to the time of its beginning and 
 shall be as unmistakably felt as is the action of the mind itself. A 
 man is to know that he does love God just as certainly as he knows 
 that he loves wife or children ; and, what is sometimes regarded as a 
 trifle mystical but which must still be maintained as a necessity, he 
 
THE MARVEL OF SPIRITUAL LIFE. 97 
 
 must also know that God loves and approves him just as surely as 
 he knows that wife or child loves him. The love for God in his soul 
 must be felt, and the answering love in God for him must be com- 
 municated to kis soul ; in other words, a conscious love in his heart 
 must answer to the divine witnessing spirit which speaks intelli- 
 gent^ to him. Wesley struck the key-note, and the whole line of 
 the fathers sang with enthusiasm : 
 
 “The Father bears him pray, 
 
 His dear Anointed One, 
 
 He cannot turn away 
 The presence of his Son. 
 
 The Spirit answers to the blood 
 And tells me I am born of God. 
 
 My God is reconciled, 
 
 His pardoning voice I hear; 
 
 He owns me for his child, 
 
 I can no longer fear. 
 
 With confidence I now draw nigh, 
 
 And Father, Abba, Father, cry.” 
 
 This gives the fullness of peace and joy in the Holy Ghost, and it 
 is the perfectness of love, the completeness of faith, the unhesitation 
 of a perfect obedience that walks boldly to the precipice, if need be, 
 and, while poising its uplifted foot over the mighty void, finds a 
 great rock rising before it and making a highway for its triumph- 
 ant march toward the kingdom of life. This is our doctrine of holi- 
 ness. Let us bless Jehovah for it and maintain it with an earnest 
 faith and a prayerful wisdom and prudence ! The preaching of it 
 has been- one of our specialties. For our hundred years of ecclesi- 
 astical life the land has rung with it. Our pulpits defend it, our 
 people claim to know it, and all our economy is redolent with its 
 heavenly fragrance. Our doctrines of a new birth, sudden and 
 known, thrilling the nature, the certainty that this is no act of man’s, 
 but the gift of God’s free grace, and the belief that this new life is 
 to be made perfect, to grow till the man becomes perfect in Christ, 
 always in Christ, however, — all this our church has ‘‘steadfastly be- 
 lieved” and must believe to the end ; and the proclamation of it, and 
 more especially the living it, has it not changed the whole expe- 
 rience and practical Christianity of all the churches? It has taught 
 them the power of a divine life. They have called it by other names, 
 but they have cheerfully accepted the experience and termed it the 
 “rest of faith,” “ the higher life,” “assurance,” and they hold it as 
 an entire consecration, a sure confidence. Methodism, whatever else 
 it has done or has not done, has made this doctrine of “scriptural 
 holiness” the one universally believed and popular idea of Chris- 
 
98 THE MARVEL OF SPIRITUAL LIFE. 
 
 tianity. The believer is to trust to Christ, who is held to be a per- 
 sonal presence and a living, loving power, so fully that he is to rest 
 in him without sin, to be blameless, united to him, and to be filled 
 with love, conscious of Christ’s sweet nature within him, full of his- 
 infinite tenderness and of the abiding blessedness of communion 
 with him. 
 
 Such a doctrine of marvelous privileges, of such exalted dignity 
 and spiritual exultation, naturally grew out of the life of the Divine 
 Nature in the soul. When a man is born of God, has thus become a 
 partaker of him, why may he not rise to any height of purity, 
 strength and perfection of love and gr^ce ? Having Jesus, the 
 anointed Savior, dwelling within him, why should he not “go on to’ 
 perfection ?” How can he do anything else than “expect to be made 
 perfect in love in this life?'’ When God is lovb and lives in him, 
 how can a consistent man count himself called to anything else than 
 to holiness and all the fullness of that noble blessing? 
 
 These four points or doctrines of sin of regeneration of an atone- 
 ment and of free grace or holiness, especially that of the new life, gave 
 to our preachers a fresh positiveness, a new and sparkling interest, 
 which actually astonished the people and attracted multitudes to 
 hear a free gospel and listen to the audacious claims of men lately 
 confessed to be sinners and now pretending to be perfect. It is sim- 
 ple enough to say that these early itinerants preached with power. 
 They believed and therefore they spoke ; when other men and 
 preachers whispered in doubt, in fear and despair even, 
 
 “How can a sinner know 
 His sins on earth forgiven? 
 
 How can a gracious Savior show* 
 
 My name inscribed in heaven ?” 
 
 these people — men, women, children — lifted each his voice like a 
 trumpet, and all together sang as when the seven thunders uttered 
 their voices : 
 
 “What we have felt and seen, 
 
 With confidence we tell: 
 
 And publish to the sons of men 
 The signs infallible. 
 
 His love supassing far 
 The love of all beneath, 
 
 We find within our hearts and dare, 
 
 The pointless darts of death. 
 
 Stronger than earth or hell, 
 
 The sacred power we prove; 
 
 And conquerors of the world, we dwell 
 In heaven, who dwell in love.” 
 
THE MARVEL OF SPIRITUAL LIFE. 99 
 
 This leads to the statement that the Methodist movement produced 
 an outburst of religious song such as was never heard from the time 
 “when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God 
 shouted for joy,” down to the days of our grand revival. Every- 
 body sang, and sang hymns of which it seems to be no blasphemy 
 nor even exaggeration, to say they are a-s truly inspired as is the 
 xiii of Paul to the Corinthians. Our people sang them and read 
 them and prayed in their words. They were for a long time our 
 litany. The people had no scruple about the propriety of singing 
 and no difficulty in measuring the tune or the time, though I have 
 had modern choristers tell me the syllables do not accentuate well: 
 
 “Faith, mighty faith, the promise sees, 
 
 And looks to that alone; 
 
 Laughs at impossibilities, 
 
 And cries it shall be done!” 
 
 It was their experience, and that old, old story was new to them, 
 and true every morning and fresh e\&ery evening. This preaching, 
 this singing, this experience-telling, led to a sociability which found 
 expression in class-meetings and love feasts, and in a hospitality aud 
 religious visiting more valuable to the frontier than is often ac- 
 knowledged. This promoted refinement and enlarged their ideas 
 of the country and of the responsibility of citizens, and made them 
 ready and able to be leaders. How many can remember the lordly 
 hospitalities of the Methodists in St. Clair, Wabash, Lawrence, Madi- 
 son and Crawford counties in this state ? And the same were abund- 
 ant in Indiana, Ohio and the East, and quite as princely were the 
 welcomes and generous entertainments on the plantations of the 
 South. This would remind us of Abraham, the friend of God, and 
 his gentlemanly feast of the angels at Mamre ; and it did a work for 
 religion, for society, for the nation, which helped to make the East 
 and the West one in spirit and in experience, and has been retained 
 till the present day, as the sessions of our annual Conferences con- 
 tinually prove. The preachers of those days were commonly gen- 
 tlemen born and bred, and they carried refinement, good manners, 
 quick intelligence, neatness of personal habits and a noble manli- 
 ness, to say nothing of the sweetness aud light of pietjq wherever 
 they went. The backwoodsman and his family in their log cabin 
 felt, when such men came among them, that they had a connection 
 with the human race, the very noblest of it, and with the Lord of 
 life and wisdom, with a whole Savior still alive too, and they 
 struggled in poverty and loneliness to make themselves worthy of 
 their high calling. To what prayer meetings did this lead, how did 
 they make the Methodists of a region, for fifty miles around, one in 
 
I 
 
 100 THE MARVEL OF SPIRITUAL LIFE. 
 
 soul, in purpose, in doctrine, in faith, in zeal, in lo've and in power! 
 They were a live people and they loved one another. Religion was 
 a real life in them, as certainly known to every one of them as is 
 the throb of the pulse at the wrist. It was a strange warmth about 
 the heart, as Wesley himself said. They scorned the word “ hope, 77 
 then so common among Christians of other churches, whose cant 
 about “a hope indulged 77 was made the occasion of much boisterous, 
 and sometimes improper ridicule. They did however speak often 
 and exultinglv of “ hope. 77 But it was not a hope of conversion nor 
 of acceptance with God. That they knew. They had experienced 
 the sweetness of that. They felt and knew the power of it. To 
 “hope 77 for it was to them an absurdity. But the hope of a here- 
 after, the hope of seeing the Savior, of meeting the saints of all 
 ages, and more particularly the hope of perfect love and the con- 
 tinuous joys of such an exalted state — such a hope they had, and it 
 filled their songs with their highest raptures. How the woods 
 echoed with the power of Christ while they sang : 
 
 “ O glorious hope of perfect love! 
 
 It lifts me up to things above, 
 
 It bears on eagles’ win^s; 
 
 It gives my ravished soul a taste, 
 
 And makes me for some moments feast 
 With piophets, priests and kings.” 
 
 Or that other of Charles Wesley’s inspired hymns: 
 
 “ O love divine, how sweet thou art! 
 
 When shall I find my willing heart 
 All tatsen up by thee? 
 
 I thirst, I faint, I die, 10 prove 
 The greatness of redeeming love, 
 
 The love of Christ to me. 
 
 “ God only knows the love of dod; 
 
 O that it now were shed abroad 
 In this poor, stony heart ! 
 
 For love I sigh, for love I pine, 
 
 This only portion, Lord, be mine, 
 
 Be mine the better part.” 
 
 Thus they mingled prayer and praise, preaching, exhortation, 
 doctrine and experience in those songs which they sang till their 
 fiesli and bones, their lips and tongues, and teeth too, knew them 
 and could sing them without note or book. And they did sing them 
 and shout them, and pray them at home and abroad, on Sabbath and 
 work-day, in the house and in the field, till the very wilderness and 
 solitary place were glad for them ; till the eagles of the air knew 
 them and the wolves of th 3 forests fled scared by their power. This 
 “ hope of perfect love ! 77 It filled them and entranced the world. 
 May it never die in our hearts! And when they held up the other 
 “ hope 77 which has inspired the saints and martyrs of all ages — flow 
 
THE MARVEL OF SPIRITUAL LIFE. 101 
 
 they sang of it, in the grandest of strains, which must have de- 
 lighted the angels themselves, as they leaned over the jasper walls 
 and listened to, 
 
 “ Come on my partners in distress, \ 
 
 My comrades through the wilderness; 
 
 Who still-your bodies feel ; 
 
 Awhile forget your griefs and fears. 
 
 And look beyond this vale of tears, 
 
 To that celestial hill. 
 
 That great mysterious Deity 
 We soon with open face shall see; 
 
 The beatific sight 
 
 Shall fill the heavenly courts with praise, 
 
 And wide diffuse the golden blaze 
 Of everlasting light.” 
 
 All this light and power, this confidence, assurance, exultation and 
 song, how it filled the land with religious activity and helped most 
 marvelously to carry our land through two of its great perils. The 
 church was first organized in December, 1784, at the time when 
 French infidelity was having its greatest popularity in this country, 
 and the work done to counteract its poison was immense. Then un- 
 belief was speculative, philosophical, negative, critical, sarcastic, 
 sneering, doubting. It had affected almost all of the foremost men 
 of our revolutionary times, excepting the Adamses, the Jays and the 
 Livingstons. It emptied the churches of men and filled the taverns 
 and spread a pall of darkness over the land from the battle of Sara- 
 toga down to the time of the beginning of our great American re- 
 vival in 1816. There had been revivals under Whitefield, Jonathan 
 Edwards and the Tenants before the declaration of Independence, 
 but their fires paled during the fierce ordeals of the war. During 
 these years the little sparks of Wesleyan life were starting flames 
 which after about 1819 set the continent in a blaze. Infidelity dif- 
 fused death, but Methodism propagated spiritual life and did much 
 to save virtue and truth. It took the ground that no mere morality 
 could be sound or profitable unless based on religious life ; and 
 while it first proclaimed life, it then insisted on virtue. From the 
 time of Wesley’s first class-meeting rules it had borne a testimony 
 against slavery, dram-drinking and tobacco-using in all their forms. 
 It was truly the pioneer of the grand reformation of temperance, 
 and on that question and the tobacco nuisance it is still far in the 
 van of the whole reformatory forces of the age. 
 
 Another line in which Methodism has been mighty was to follow 
 the trail of the pioneer and the emigrant and preserve him and his 
 family from barbarism and heathenism. This topic would be a 
 grand one for the application of a sermon like this. Methodism has 
 
102 TIIE MARVEL OF SPIRITUAL LIFE. 
 
 carried the life of Christ to that mighty tide of population which 
 has overflowed this continent. These early itinerants of ours, these 
 gentlemen saints, went with one work in their hearts and only oue 
 on their hands; but they were statesmen as well, and teachers, too, 
 and builders of intelligence and character. So they took religious 
 books and sold them everywhere, and there has grown from their 
 desire and determination to circulate books filled with God’s truth 
 and descriptive of the Christian life, the largest book-making estab- 
 lishment on the globe — an establishment which makes the whole 
 Methodist church the grandest agency for circulating a pure litera- 
 ture and for counteracting the pernicious influence of bad books the 
 imagination of man can conceive. Those old men, far-seeing — nay, 
 I recall the word, and yet only to atfirm it in a nobler sense — those 
 menl^a little blind to the difficulties in their way, but inspired by 
 God to see beyond the mountain tops, built a publishing house that 
 scatters knowledge almost as widely as the sun scatters his rays; 
 „ and to it every preacher and Sunday-school superintendent is a 
 bountiful hand to carry the sweetest, purest, noblest literature to the 
 world. It is one of our marvels. No human mind can tell how 
 much we have done for the world in this line. 
 
 In every movement to reform the morals, or to improve the man- 
 ners, or promote the intelligence or power of men, our church has 
 been the boldest aggressor on sin, and its members are everywhere 
 among the forlorn hope of every benevolence, or advance campaign 
 toward the upbuilding of right on earth. One thing which has con- 
 tributed materially to this end has undoubtedly been our doctrine or 
 belief concerning a call to the ministry. According to this, God 
 calls and commissions men to-day as truly as the Master called and 
 endowed the fishermen and carpenters of Galilee, to preach his gos- 
 pel and to organize his church. Our early preachers believed that 
 they were thrust out to proclaim truth and convert sinners ; and they 
 did cry aloud and spare not. They went asking no salary and 
 making no complaint if they received not a penny. They shared the 
 frugal fare of the pioneer, and, if for any cause, there was not en- 
 ough of cash collected to enable them to live decently without in- 
 curring debt, they located at once, esteeming the lack of support an 
 effectual shutting of the door against them. But while God gave 
 them the hearts of the people and kept them in the field, they feared 
 no man, and called everyone, everywhere to repentance and life. 
 The doctrine of a divine call to the ministry is one we need to revive 
 and emphasize. On it God’s church is founded. A man’s church 
 may be founded on a self-called, or a chnrch-callpd ministry. Men 
 can attract to men, they can organize themselves. But all such com- 
 
THE MARVEL OF SPIRITUAL LTFE 103 
 
 binations, or organizations, or corporations, with whatever sanction 
 of nature, 'or law, or convenience they may have, are, after all, 
 human institutions and can have no more than a human authority. 
 But a man or woman created anew in Christ Jesus and made to be a 
 living soul, and then called of God and commissioned by Him and 
 directed by his spirit, is not a human attraction and wields not a 
 human power. He does not form human institutions : He builds the 
 kingdom of God and Christ, the kingdom of heaven, obedience, love, 
 joy and peace in the earth. He brings a divine, a supernatural agency 
 into the affairs of a sinful world and thereby introduces order and 
 every good thing. 
 
 No man can enter our pulpits for gain without incurring the guilt 
 of Simon Magus, nor can he innocently accept its duties with even a 
 conscientious desire to do goo * 1 and a reverent calculation that his 
 talents are adapted to its work. No mere philanthropic ardor must 
 move him to it. He must inwardly hear the divine voice calling 
 him ; he must see around him the imperious providences of God, 
 commanding him to that labor ; he must find the -seal of the Highest 
 on his work, approving and attesting his own desire. There must be 
 a woe behind him, like the smoke of Sodom, a yearning within him, 
 a signal above him like the cross in the sky, a promise before him 
 like the mountain of Zoar, all urging him to preach the gospel 
 of everlasting life if he would save his soul hereafter or have the 
 peace of God in this life. This is our theory and it has been our 
 practice from our beginning. God be praised ! And if ever a man 
 has entered our ministry without this high call he has been sadly 
 mistaken, or has committed perjury. And the same must be said of 
 the authorities of the church ; if they admit him they have erred or 
 sinned most grievously. 
 
 While we hold the call to the ministry high enough, it is not cer- 
 tain but that our practice falls below the standard of the fathers. Do 
 not many of our preachers starve in the ministry and starve their 
 families because they are not men of authority and power ? Do they 
 feel that God himself has sent them to find the lost sheep ? They 
 feed the sheep and the lambs, too, if they come to the fold of their 
 own accord ; but do they go into the wilderness and find those who 
 go astray? They are capital servants at the Lord’s marriage feast 
 to wait on those who have heard and obeyed the first invitation. 
 But how energetic are they to go out into the highways and hedges, 
 in the thunder aud the hail, and compel them to come in? The 
 divine commission, the woe is me, ought to push us out as it did the 
 fathers, to go after men, so that every man on the circuit, member of 
 our church, or another, or of no church, should in some way and at 
 
104 THE MARVEL OF SPIRITUAL LIFE. 
 
 some time hear the divine call and feel the touch of the divine tire, 
 not with the purpose altogether to make him a Methodist, but to 
 make him live, to convert him to life, the life of love in God. The 
 man thus called gathers Christ’s sheep into Christ’s fold, and not 
 Methodist, nor Presbyterian, nor Baptist sheep into a sectarian pen. 
 He works in the Lord’s vineyard, and the clusters he finally gathers 
 are for the wine to be drunk new with the Master in his own king- 
 dom. Such a man, called by such a high calling, has authority, not 
 to lord it over God’s heritage, but to be a servant of the Most High 
 and a worker together with him in building the temple in which all 
 men are to worship. He labors not for a reward, but because he 
 loves his Savior and his brethren. 
 
 Some of our usages have been peculiar, and have, as has been said, 
 grown out of our doctrines. Perhaps the strangest of all has been 
 our itinerant ministry. It cannot be eulogized or defended here. 
 But that a class of men should surrender the idea of a permanent 
 home and devote themselves to the wandering life, almost of a gypsy, 
 and give up to an’other man the right to choose for them the annual 
 place for their labor, and also should surrender to others the right 
 to fix for them their compensation for that work and to exact ser- 
 vices in unlimited measure, is a wonder. This has been going on for 
 a hundred years and has been endured, even welcomed; and more 
 than five hundred men every year enter our conferences on proba- 
 tion and joyfully accept it as a duty. Women, as wives, accompany 
 them, share the sufferings and contribute in a large degree to the 
 success of the work. Each year now sees an army — counting in, as 
 we rightly do, the followers, ministers and families — of more than 
 thirty thousand souls liable to break up all the sacred associations of 
 home and friendship, of kindred and memory, and go among stran- 
 gers simply to preach Jesus and to exemplify the power of a living 
 Savior. Talk of the cessation of miracles. Here is one before you ! 
 And it has been one arm of our power. Do not weaken it ; strengthen 
 it if possible ; but cut it off and half our power goes too. The Meth- 
 odist church, by its ministry, has made great sacrifices and performed 
 heroic labors. How often have the pioneers treaded the wilderness, 
 following the trail of the explorer by the blazed trees!. They have 
 encountered dangers of floods and wild beasts. Frosts and heats 
 beat upon them ; fevers and malarias lay in wait for them. The sun 
 by day aiid the stars by night saw them shelterless and lonesome, 
 hungry and destitute of all but Christ and their own indomitable 
 courage. For years Uiey wandered seeking the souls of men, to 
 preach a gospel of free salvation, of mighty faith, and of the glori- 
 ous redemption by Jesus. What are the results? A nation saved 
 
THE MARVEL OF SPIRITUAL LIFE. 105 
 
 from infidelity, a church of power organized and half a heaven al- 
 most filled with saints. But there is more than this, great as it is. 
 It is a marvel ; but there is more by far. 
 
 Our nation, at the public expense and with the plaudits of the 
 world, has lately brought home the frostbitten remnants of the two 
 hundredth expedition which has been sent in search of the north 
 pole, or of a northeast passage to Asia. Nearly three hundred years 
 have been spent in a vain attempt to penetrate the icy barriers of 
 the north. Wonders of endurance and skill and foresight and en- 
 ergy have been displayed, and the end has baffled them all. They 
 have come back mutilated, defeated, sickening, dying, apparently 
 empty-handed, and we ask, what good has been gained? Science 
 steps forward, and boldly balancing life against intelligence, affirms 
 that every ship which rides the ocean is safer for the knowledge of 
 the magnetic pole and the aerial currents and the glacial drifts which 
 these men have learned and brought back with them. Every 
 life which enters a vessel on the water is more secure for their toils 
 and dangers. So when you ask what these men — these itinerant 
 preachers — who have braved the perils of the forest and the moun- 
 tain, of the torrent and the desert, who have suffered the privations 
 of the homeless itinerancy, what they have done, what is the profit 
 of their toil? religion, balancing spiritual life against formality, 
 Christ’s peace against death, answers : every child that is born has 
 a more comfortable place in which to grow up and a more virtuous 
 society in which to be nurtured; every man has a higher motive to 
 be honest, and every woman a better security for character; every 
 hamlet has a better opportunity to seek peace and to acquire learn- 
 ing; every village and city has a better law and a higher sentiment 
 of right and duty; every sinner has a better chance to repent, and 
 every Christian a better knowledge of salvation and a clearer call to 
 a life of joy and peace, of sanctification and honor, than would have 
 been possible without these itinerants, their labors and their sacri- 
 fices. Every church in the land is better to-day than it could have 
 been if the Methodist Church had not been organized a hundred 
 years ago. The world properly knows the perils encountered by 
 the Arctic explorers, bnt how small were their real dangers is 
 seen by the fact that less, than two per cent, of them all perished in 
 their voyages, and this includes Sir John Franklin and all his com- 
 rades. The real loss of life to men, women and children by the toils and 
 hardships consequent on the annual removals of the Methodist min- 
 isters and their families, is annually almost as great as all the losses 
 of all the Arctic expeditions put together ; and the world, the church, 
 religion herself, each affirms that it pays. Every other child of man 
 
108 THE MARVEL OF SPIRITUAL LIFE. 
 
 finds a better world, in which helplessness and innocence can thrive ; 
 and peace, and joy, and truth and right are all brought nearer to 
 their final triumph. 
 
 But this strain has probably already been pressed till the hearers 
 are weary. There stands the church of our choice, chosen from 
 among all others, because first of its glorious doctrines of life and 
 perfection, of divine authority and power ; and second, because of 
 its marvelous history and influence. We can point to it as we do to 
 the dome of the sky, and say God made it, and he has adorned it 
 with the lives of the saints, with orators of almost angelic power, 
 with deeds of heroism equal to the martyr age of the church. It is, 
 as God has builded it, on the sure foundation. It is the mountain 
 of the Lord’s house, filled with all glory, and we look at it, and at 
 its doctrines and its members, as we enumerate them all, and walk 
 about them, simply to find occasion to stimulate our desire, to offer 
 praise and adoration to God, the Father and the Son, and the Holy 
 Ghost, as we exclaim “ What hath God wrought!” “ Marvelous are 
 his works ; in wisdom hath he made them all ! ” “ He hath given 
 us a goodly heritage.” Let us be glad and praise only him ! 
 
 We may not be allowed to close even a sermon of boasting and 
 adulation — though this is not such — without, in old Methodist 
 fashion, appending an exhortation to duty. Such an ending in such 
 n presence would be as unorthodox and as untimely as for the 
 Bishop to omit to ask the candidates for admission into conference^ 
 those two strange questions, as others deem them : “Do you expect 
 to be made perfect in love in this life?” “Are you groaning after 
 it ?” which last question some squeamish body has, I believe, per- 
 suaded our General Conference to smooth for the tongue of our 
 Bishops into rhetorical jelly thus: “Are you striving earnestly after 
 it?” Do not let us be afraid of the old form of question so long as we 
 read that the spirit helpeth our infirmities with “groanings that 
 cannot be uttered.” And so, my brethren, I beseech you, “suffer a 
 word of exhortation,” according to apostolic usage. 
 
 1. Never leave a member or a probationer till he know x that he 
 is converted, till, according to all our history, traditions and be- 
 liefs, he knows that he is filled with the life of Christ, till he burns 
 with inextinguishable blaze. It is an immense danger that we incur 
 when we take a seeker, having only a desire to flee from the wrath to 
 come, into our church as a probationer. In such a case we take one 
 who is not alive at all, and join him to a living body. We need 
 caution, or we may repeat the experience of the unconverted Paul, 
 and find ourselves joined to a body of death. A fire is just as com- 
 pletely extinguished by an abundance of fuel heaped upon it in dis- 
 
THE MARVEL OF SPIRITUAL LIFE. 107 
 
 order, as by water. But let the brands you bring to it be all ablaze, 
 and no matter what be the amount or order, they then add tire to 
 lire. The only way to avoid this danger is to make thp church a 
 place to convert men, as well as a place to enjoy and get dignity. 
 And it will do us good to remember that the church can exert her 
 full force far better within her pale than out of it. But she must 
 never let a soul rest till fully converted. It is only a little thing to 
 get a probationer to join a vigorous, active, sympathizing, helpful 
 caurch. That is only a short step, and it may be only toward for- 
 malism. When it has been taken, then our great work begins. Let 
 never one probationer be left till he is converted and knows it. He 
 is near the minister, near the church, near to Christ. Get him con- 
 verted with p*ower, let him be born again, and then let the critics 
 and the cynics and the doubters, and the lovers of the Lord Jesus, 
 ask, if they will, “What becomes of the probationers?” When they 
 are converted your answer will be, as you read over your list writ- 
 ten up, “This man and that man was born there.” The conversion 
 of every seeker will be the antidote for a superficial revival. It will 
 stop all cavil, and will build the kingdom of Christ in truth. 
 
 2. And when men and women are converted, stick to them and 
 build them up in the faith and the practice of all duty. For often 
 we treat our converts as though we were ashamed of them, and so 
 we leave them to be foundlings at the doors of the neighboring 
 churches, or we act toward them as the amphibians to their young, 
 never feed or brood them. Every convert needs a Christian 
 nurture, and we should give this to every one born at our altars by 
 our labors. We ought to bind them to us with hooks of steel, with 
 kind brotherly love, with a mother's* tenderness and a father's 
 gentle authority, so that escape is impossible. If the Methodist 
 Church had held its converts as well even as other churches do, 
 she would probably have at least three times as many members as 
 now, and the very effort to hold them, as I Have indicated, by getting 
 them thoroughly converted and indoctrinated, would have given us 
 a far stronger piety than we now have. We sometimes repel by our 
 pride of numbers and by cur pride in our usages, and many a time 
 by the ignorance of our unformed, illiterate, ill-mannered preach- 
 ing. Now and then I have seen a man who thought himself called 
 of God to preach, whose chief evidence of such a call seemed to the 
 world to be a total misconception of his office, and who seemed to 
 think the power to abandon modesty was a sign of grace and wis- 
 dom, and the only way to show his authority was to fall to beating 
 the man servants and the maid servants. Indeed, I believe this 
 latter plan is one of the specifics for getting up a revival of some 
 
108 THE MARVEL OF SPIRITUAL LIFE. 
 
 evangelistic tramps who aspire to conduct, as they say, revivals, who 
 travel and “get up” “protracted efforts” at fifty dollars a week. And 
 these revivals “got up” in this way, get down quicker than boys’ 
 kites when the strings break. Let our ministers do the thorough 
 work of converting with the wisdom of the serpent and the harm- 
 lessness of the dove, with the patience of love itself, and with the 
 untiring energy of him who neither slumbers nor sleeps, and our 
 converts will not only abide in the church which gave them- birth, 
 but they will make her “as a city without walls, for the multitude 
 of men and cattle therein.” Her sons and daughters shall fill the 
 valleys and overspread the plains and cover the hills like the 
 heavenly hosts themselves, an innumerable company which no man 
 can number. 
 
 3. Again, let us not forget that conversion, regeneration, the new 
 creature, is but a beginning of life, and that our instantaneously 
 attained perfection is only another name for a very small blessing, 
 compared with the maturity of grace to which daily communion 
 with God can attain. “To be a Methodist in early times,” says 
 Dorothy Fairfax, “was to be rapt in devotion and rich in expe- 
 rience.” It was to talk with God, to* walk with him, to dwell with 
 him, to grow in him as a grafted shoot grows into a tree. We are 
 in danger here again, I fear. We must distinguish sharply between 
 birth into the kingdom and growth in that kingdom, between the 
 fullness of love as a state attained by faith and the character 
 strengthened, established by abiding in God. For admission to the 
 state of peace, joy and righteousness only faith is required; but to 
 build the habit and character of righteousness, time is an element. 
 Birth is instantaneous ; character comes only after struggle and con- 
 flict. Life is from life, and its element or germ must begin sud- 
 denly, when it touches what is to be made a new life. Then comes a 
 period of growth, longer or shorter, according to the dignity of 
 its position in the scale of being. And finally, the life, whatever it 
 is, assumes an independence for itself, and acts its part in the grand 
 economy of nature or the universe. For growth, for character, for 
 wisdom, for spiritual development, time is an essential element, and 
 we shall hurt ourselves as a church if we ignore it, in our eagerness 
 to emphasize the mighty power of God shown, as we insist, in in- 
 stantaneous or sudden conversion and in immediate sanctification. 
 A child grows, a scholar grows, a saint grows, a preacher grows, 
 and we must not forget that growth of religious character can only 
 be in time. Life begins in a germ and requires time to develop its 
 power and attain its results. 
 
THE MARVEL OF SPIRITUAL LIFE. 
 
 109 
 
 Sometimes even the dead matter with which we are to build re- 
 quires time also to get itself perfected or fully made, as in case of 
 the cement which holds our bricks and stones together. It needs to 
 dissolve and then harden. Builders have for ages wondered at the 
 enduring nature of the Roman cement which is now found in houses 
 at Rome, built in the time of Augustus. That cement is so much 
 better than any thing modern art knows, that a reward of thousands 
 of dollars was offered for a knowledge how to make it. But the other 
 day in digging at Herculaneum the workmen found the recipe for it 
 written on the face of a wall. And all the secret of it is, ‘-'let the 
 lime and sand be mixed and remain three years before using.” The 
 lime is thus dissolved, and the whole becomes perfectly hydrated, so 
 that water, lime and sand are united into one substance. Age or 
 time is the transforming force in this as in fruits and in characters 
 also. So while we continue to demand sudden conversions and look 
 for instantaneous sanctifications, let us also demand for our 
 Christians, and especially for our ministers, a maturity of character, 
 such as shall make them men in Christ, and not babes. You can 
 make a convert, a neophyte, a prosolyte in an hour or less, but for 
 the real saint to be made and to grow, it will probably need forty 
 years. But when the saint is made you have the noblest work of 
 God. And when a church is full of saints, it is worth the while of 
 the world to note the fact and honor the work. It is not quite cer- 
 tain but we have neglected this important element of Christian 
 growth or nurture, and have seemed to act as though the mere re- 
 generation and sanctification of the soul were enough, or more 
 properly, to state it in other words, our usage seems to imply that a 
 sOul having once tasted the heavenly gift and been made a partaker 
 of the Holy Ghost could never fall away ; the blessedness of life is 
 so sweet, the power of the world to come is so mighty, that who- 
 ever feels the thrill of life divine will never give it up, but with his 
 bodily life. And so we leave the work of building the soul or char- 
 acter to accident. We forgef that one real example of virtuous 
 living is worth more than a dozen prosolytes. Our organization on 
 the plan of an itinerant ministry, our habit of preaching, our doc- 
 trine of conversion, all fit us specially for revival work, and there 
 has always been danger that we should press forward in this line, 
 neglecting the other one of character-building. We have done well 
 to remember for ourselves and to remind the world that nothing 
 can take the place of this life of God in the human soul. The one 
 primal, indispensible condition of salvation and of growth in 
 virtue and godliness is the new creature. Without this the man is 
 dead — a lump of clay. When this life enters the nature, then a 
 
110 THE MARVEL OF SPIRITUAL LIFE. 
 
 Christian can be nurtured, a state of righteousness can be main- 
 tained. And it is proper to say here that our system of class meet- 
 ings, our love-feasts, our quarterly meetings, our prayer meetings, 
 with their songs and testimonies, with their experiences told and 
 believed, with altar work and individual exhortations and persua- 
 sions, are all adapted to building character ; and whenever we have 
 neglected this we have failed in our most available line. 
 
 4.. There is one other sign of the times we shall do well to heed. 
 A question or two will hint it. Are our people in love with class 
 meetings and social prayer as formerly? Have we not rather put 
 these on the defensive? When an institution thus stands to repel 
 attacks it is losing its hold in some way. When slavery began to 
 defend itself, it was doomed beyond redemption. Dram-drinking 
 is now in the same position. Our methods must not stop to parley 
 or defend. They must go forward and deliver blows. Every agency 
 we have ever used is as available to-day as in the good old times of 
 the fathers. And our wisdom is to show the value and power of 
 each by using it with a new vigor. The warrior who stops to argue 
 the temper or beauty or the utility of his swtn’d will assuredly lose 
 his battle. But when he smites his enemies to the death, then he 
 shows the value of his weapons and his own prowess at the same 
 time. 
 
 There is a sort of doubt whispered vaguely in the air, and heard 
 as sometimes a coming storm is heard, more by an ominous stillness 
 than by sound, whether our church has not lost in some way, at least 
 a part of its power. The question implies danger, and the method 
 to avoid such a danger is to push into the thickest of combat, to be 
 as aggressive as ever, and to take hold of every one of our well 
 tried agencies and use them to their utmost. Do not let the power 
 of our preaching fail, nor its personal point be blunted for any 
 rhetorical glitter, or logical exactness, or literary polish of the ser- 
 mon, written in the leisure of the study and read in the pulpit, with 
 all the oratorical graces acquired before the mirror, or under the 
 drill of the elocutionist. Do not let the social, pastoral, godly inter- 
 course between preacher and people become disused, and remain a 
 memory and a myth, for any desire of reading, or learning, science, 
 or lecturing, or writing. Do not omit the work of the ministry for 
 any secular employment whatever. If you are compelled to secular 
 work, let another take your office. Preach the word as all your 
 work; preach publicly and privately ; preach with your whole soul, 
 and energy and time, or quit, and let the Master call another. Never 
 fear but he will take care of you if you act with common prudence, 
 so long as he wants you in the ministry. Never you fear about one 
 
THE MARVEL OF SPIRITUAL LIFE. 
 
 Ill 
 
 of our usages, or institutions, or methods, so long as you apply it 
 with vigor and prayer. Some people fear that Methodism is losing 
 its power. Some of its members, some of its preachers are losing 
 power. There is no doubt about that. So it has always been ; men 
 lose power and even die. But Methodism is a force in the world 
 greater than ever, and it is destined to grow, no imagination can 
 tell how mightily. Tennyson sang for the brook : 
 
 “ Men may come and men may go, 
 
 But I go on forever.” 
 
 Weak minds fear for the church. It is losing its prominence, but 
 not its power. Formerly it was the one institution of the world, 
 greater than the nation or than kingdoms and empires. Now the 
 school and the market, the corporation, the society, the convention 
 and the congress have risen into prominence and even threaten to 
 overshadow it. Nay, it is greater than ever. Its visible magnifi- 
 cence has in a large measure vanished, its ability to strike the senses 
 is less, its pomp and pageantry are indeed diminished. But there 
 has always been danger that these would be mistaken for its living 
 power, and that men’s minds, and hearts too, would rest in them and 
 not apprehend the essence underlying them. Even the Bible — so 
 boldly is it criticised — is a subject of fear, lest it should be forgotten, 
 or grow to be an unfashionable book of myths and obsolete histories 
 anfl songs. It is too true to human nature to be outgrown or for- 
 gotten. There is danger that men may under estimate it, to be sure. 
 But we must remember that religion lived and grew before there 
 was any Bible; and some of the most interesting and pious of the 
 saints, as Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, proved themselves worthy of 
 everlasting honor without it. Even Moses lived eighty years with- 
 out it, till Jehovah gave him authority to begin it. We hold that it 
 is to abide and be the delight of ages to come as of ages past, to be 
 the instructor of the children as it has been of the fathers. But is 
 there not more danger of making it an idol than of losing it? Re- 
 ligion is greater than its book, for it was before it, and religion made 
 it. Christ is greater than the little imperfect — so St. John intimates 
 — history written in scraps by the four evangelists. Great as the 
 Bible is, Jesus is infinitely greater, and religion rests on him as its 
 corner stone. And even he found it expedient to go away, lest men 
 should make him a king, that is, an idol, to be worshipped before 
 God. The Roman Church to-day worships his cross, his human 
 mother, the sacrament of his supper, and if the body of Moses or of 
 Jesus had not been hidden, we might to-day have been bowing down 
 to them as objects, of worship. This English Bible of ours is the 
 
* 
 
 112 THE MARVEL OF SPIRITUAL LIFE. 
 
 noblest book of the ages and of the universe. But Christ/ and not it, 
 is the bread of life. And Christ, as we shall do well to remember, 
 has promised to come and teach us. Let us take him as the bread of 
 life and feed the people with him, with his words, the few of them 
 which the Bible has preserved ; with his life as his acts and sacrifices 
 have revealed it ; with his spirit as he gives it to us ; especially with 
 his love as he tills us with it ; with his life as he joins us to him and 
 sends it through our souls. Do not let us worship anything but God 
 and his Son, our Savior. Honor the Bible, revere. Christianity, 
 glorify religion by a godly life, and die for all these and for religion 
 if need be, but worship only God. All along the battle line, where 
 we are fighting for the church, for the Bible, for Methodism, for re- 
 ligion herself, there is a trembling of fear lest infidelity or atheism 
 should triumph, lest somehow all our hopes should perish, or the 
 church, or the Bible, or religion should get injured in the fight. 
 Never, in the least, fear for these. Men may be wounded, killed even, 
 but religion never. All that is human in the Bible may perish in the 
 fierce heat of the controversy, and if there is a human element, not 
 joined indissolubly to the divine, be sure that it will be burned’ out. 
 All of man’s work about the church may be destroyed, indeed must 
 be ; creeds may be disallowed and dogmas may be discarded, but not 
 a jot or a tittle of God’s truth and law will be removed. Infidelity, 
 atheism, materialism, pantheism, science, evolution, each and all may 
 mislead men and delude them to death, but religion they cannot 
 touch. She is spiritual and incorporeal, and not one of their weap- 
 ons can reach her. She is Truth — the Truth — and nothing can hurt 
 her. Our Christian ministers often allow themselves to forget this 
 vital distinction between religion and its formulated creeds, between 
 its essentials and its accidents. It is love and life, the love of God 
 and man, God’s life in the soul ; and a creed has no more to do 
 with it than the voice of a man has to do with his life. Do you not 
 know you may cut off arms, eyes, ears, teeth, tongue and flesh, sur- 
 geons cannot tell yet how much, and leave the man alive? So we 
 may cut off creeds, dogmas, usages, ordinances, institutions, biblical 
 texts even, we know not how much or how many, and leave religion 
 alive. It may be dutj r to fight for every one of these as a man would 
 for his eyes, but if they get to be idols, as is possible, we must cut 
 them off and cast them from us. “It is better that one of the mem- 
 bers should perish than that the whole body should be cast into hell.” 
 Let a creed go, let an institution go, let an interpretation go, but 
 never let the life of God in the soul go ; never let Jesus, the indwell- 
 ing Savior, go. One of our Bishops has recently said : “The grip of 
 
THE MARVEL OF SPIRITUAL LIFE. 113 
 
 religion has been loosened.”* With all deference I must protest that 
 he has used a wrong word altogether. * Not religion, but men’s no- 
 tions of it ; not religion, but the creed which men have framed to 
 express their little ideas of it ; not religion, but the form in which 
 men have tried to embody it. I am aware that these notions, these 
 ideas, these creeds, these forms, are all that some men have of relig- 
 ion, and when anybody carries them off, they cry in bitterness, with 
 the selfish Laban, “Ye have stolen my gods;” and they leave flocks 
 and home and pursue the marauders, not thinking that an idol, or a 
 visible image, or a form of words, may come between God and the 
 soul and be death, and that therefore they should be thankful to any 
 one who will seize them and cast them to the moles and bats. Relig- 
 ion lost its grip on this world ! Never, while God is King and 
 Christ is the Savior of men, the One mighty to save ! When relig- 
 ion, which is life, as I have to-day insisted, and as the grand dis- 
 course from which I quote the sentence argues, with far greater force 
 than any of my words can have, when religion loses its grip on this 
 world the planet will be a wreck and will float in space as insigni- 
 ficant and as aimless as the dust, which scientists say Krakatoa sent 
 from its crater a year ago to cumber the upper air of this earth ; use- 
 less only as it causes the eastern and western skies to burn with 
 purple beauty when the sun approaches them. Let religion lose its 
 grip and it will be worse for man than if the fires of the sun were 
 put out. It has not lost its grip, I protest before all creation. “There 
 is no enchantment against Jacob, neither is there any divination 
 against Israel.” 
 
 My Brothers, it is our duty to hold this religious life up before the 
 world as its only hope. First, to make our own souls, by God’s free 
 grace, the temples of the living God — living temples — examples of 
 Christ’s life, radiant with love, strong in consecrated faith, and glo- 
 rious in purified character. Then are we fit to be servants and to 
 be honored with the Master’s commission. We must labor to make 
 every member of the church such as this, to present every man per- 
 fect in Christ Jesus. After this we may glory in Methodism. We 
 do boast of it. We need not. All we need do is to point to it. 
 There it stands. In presence of Niagara or Mount Shasta you need 
 no guide-book description; each speaks its own eulogy. You need 
 
 * Centennary Thoughts, page 85. I know the tone of the book is very inconsistent 
 with the sentence quoted, and I only regret the expression becanse 1 yvould not have so 
 beautiful a work of art marred by a single blemish; so powerful an argument weak- 
 ened by a single unfortunate admission; so grateful a vase of ointment affected with 
 even the trace of a single fly. 
 
3 0112 042498516 
 
 114 THE MARVEL OF SPIRITUAL LIFE. 
 
 not praise the sun on the meridian. So our church wants no com- 
 mendation. She came into existence just before Watt gave the 
 steam engine its power, and has been a moral and religious force, 
 keeping pace with all the wonderfully mighty civilizing forces and 
 agencies of the English-speaking race. Along with the growth of 
 her spiritual power, which has revolutionized all religious thought 
 and activity, physical forces have been revolutionizing every form 
 of industry. About the time of her importation to America, science 
 began, with Priestly, to analyze and experiment and rearrange 
 knowledge, till scarcely a dogma of the scientific creeds is now held 
 as then. But ami.d all changes of physical machinery and scientific 
 theory our church has held to the one doctrine and. the one practice, 
 the necessity of the new birth and the blessedness of perfect trust 
 and entire consecration to God. Millions have been her converts. 
 Millions on earth lift up their hands and praise her, and millions 
 more in heaven glory in her power. She has grown in the midst of 
 the battles of the giants — science and education — materialism and 
 and philosophy, doubt and denial, criticism and agnosticism, 
 spiritualism and diabolism, too. To-day her bark rides the 
 ocean as proudly and as safely as the ship on Galilee in which 
 the Master himself was sleeping. We need have no fear for her. 
 She is a part of the great religion of God and humanity. She will 
 live ; her millions will multiply. God is in the jnidst of her and he 
 will help her. But how about ourselves, brothers ? Do we live ? Is 
 Christ Jesus in us, the life and the truth?. Skepticism and criticism 
 may shake our foundations of creed and of character ; and if we are 
 not full of faith we may perish by it, but the church and her Lord 
 they will never touch. Let us be sure the church is in us — not simply 
 we in the church — that Christ himself — not simply a belief concern- 
 ing him — is in us, and then may we sing : 
 
 “ Who in the Lord confide 
 And feel his sprinkled blood, 
 
 In storms and hurricanes alide, 
 
 Firm as the mount of God.” 
 
 As we ask: “What hath God wrought?* and answer by pointing 
 to the stars and say, like these' in number and in glory to shine for- 
 ever, have been our converts, our deeds and our triumphs, we may 
 lift our hearts and pray, trusting Christ, that all we have done may be 
 but a single ray of light in the dawning compared to the full-orbed 
 glory of the sun which tips the mountains with the coming flood of 
 day !